After two days of steady and grief-y tears, I am starting to feel better and perhaps a bit of my mojo has returned. Unfortunately, this return was marked by another, my first hot flash since my Lupron injection last week.

Perhaps the current stage of grieving fever has broken. Alternatively, I guess a little mojo plus a fine film of sweat does sound a little like a tropical vacation.

Thanks for worrying about me, people. I am hopeful that I will get a break from the necessary but sucky Sadland, in which I have resided for the past couple of days.

I’m glad you are feeling better. You need to concentrate on the many blessings you have been given. You have outstanding beauty, and many talents that others would love to have…You need to concentrate on the positive aspects of your life and work through the negatives. Think about it.
If you had a client who had all your gifts and still was stressed…What advice would you give him/her?

Mom, I would validate her sadness and tell her that it was a normal and healthy part of grief. But I would do that as her psychologist and not as her mother.

I know this is hard for you, Mom. When Zoe is sad, it fills the pit of my stomach and I wait anxiously for her to feel better. And the pit of your stomach has to accommodate the pain of 6 children, not just 1.

I can be a happy person and experience much sadness. I understand that now. And I will be bouncin’ and behavin’ again before you know it.

This may be a good time to tell you that I have been practicing “How can I keep from singing” because I want to record it with you.

So let’s do that after you return from your 10 day worry free camping trip. xoxo

It is most daunting for me when my emotions go along on my body’s rollercoaster ride. I hope your current feeling that things are getting easier lasts and helps you get past the sadness and grief over what has been lost. I don’t know if it will help you like it helps me, but, at times like this, I play positive and happy music and try to coax that positivity into my own make-up. I start it first thing in the a.m. (quietly) and up the volume a bit when I start to feel low. The soundtrack in a movie is usually what has me tense or scared in a theater. I try to manage my life’s ups and downs with a little “subliminal” messaging that it will be okay. The only time this really did not help me at all was during chemo sessions. In other situations it helped even if only a little.

After all the many times grief has kicked my ass, I’ve come to see it as more of a sine wave rather than something with a finite beginning and end. It’s probably not the last time you’ll experience this, so keep giving yourself permission to experience it. You know you’re strong but grieving is never weak.

Yes, that is wise advice. That is one of the main reasons I am keeping my practice to 75% time rather than full time or full time+ as I was doing in the past. I just don’t know when the wind is going to be knocked out of my sails and I need to make sure that I can respond appropriately when it happens.

George Lakoff has retired as Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. He is now Director of the Center for the Neural Mind & Society (cnms.berkeley.edu).